Belly was a loyalty program founded in August 2011 in Chicago by Logan LaHive and Craig Ulliott, receiving its initial round of around $3M in funding from Chicago-based

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

firm

Lightbank Lightbank is a financial organization that specializes in making venture capital investments including seed investments, Series A round and late-stage investments in companies across the United States. The company was founded in 2010, and is hea ...

. Belly provides a

loyalty program A loyalty program or rewards program is a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of one or more businesses associated with the program. Single-company vs. coalition programs Loyalty progr ...

for merchants, using an in-store iPad for the merchant and an app for customers. It charges merchants $50 to $100 a month for the service, which includes an iPad, a case and lock for the iPad, marketing materials, plus data and analytics. Customers earn loyalty points by checking in at the store with a QR code technology to earn points that could be redeemed as a merchant chose.Tricia Duryee
Four Reasons Why Andreessen Horowitz Is Investing $10 Million in Belly
AllThingsD, May 8, 2012

History

By May 2012, Belly had signed up around 1,400 merchants and was available in Chicago, Austin, Milwaukee, Madison, Wis., Washington D.C., Phoenix, New York and Boston, and had around 200,000 active users. At that time it received an additional $10M in funding from

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

and Silicon Valley Bank.Lenna Rao
Customer Loyalty And Rewards Platform For Local Businesses Belly Raises $10M From Andreessen Horowitz

TechCrunch TechCrunch is an American global online newspaper focusing on topics regarding high tech, high-tech and Startup company, startup companies. It was founded in June 2005 by Archimedes Ventures, led by partners Michael Arrington and Keith Teare. I ...

. May 8, 2012. In September 2012, Belly was included as a launch partner in

Apple Wallet Apple Wallet (or simply Wallet, known as Passbook prior to iOS 9) is a digital wallet developed by Apple Inc. and included with iOS and watchOS that allows users to store Wallet passes such as coupons, boarding passes, Campus card, student ID c ...

. By September 2013, Belly was integrated into

Google Wallet Google Wallet (or simply Wallet) is a digital wallet platform developed by Google. It is available for the Android, Wear OS, and Fitbit OS operating systems, and was announced on May 11, 2022, at the 2022 Google I/O keynote. It began rollin ...

. In August 2013, Belly received a Series B-1 round of funding of $12.1M led by

New Enterprise Associates New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is an American-based venture capital firm. NEA focuses investment stages ranging from seed stage through growth stage across an array of industry sectors. With over $25 billion in committed capital, NEA is one of t ...

DAG Ventures DAG Ventures is an American venture capital firm based in Palo Alto, California. DAG Ventures works with startups in providing early stage and growth stage funding. Since its founding in 2004, by Tom Goodrich and John Cadeddu, the firm has backe ...

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

, and 7-Ventures, a subsidiary of

7-Eleven 7-Eleven, Inc. is an American convenience store chain, headquartered in Irving, Texas. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of Seven-Eleven Japan, which in turn is owned by the retail holdings company Seven & I Holdings. The chain was founde ...

. In June 2014, Belly announced international expansion, starting in

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its Provinces and territories of Canada, ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, making it the world's List of coun ...

. In August 2014,

rolled out the Belly rewards program in 2,600 locations. However,

discontinued the Belly program on November 30, 2016, In November 2016, Logan LaHive stepped down as CEO of Belly and was succeeded by COO Dan Gloede. In November 2018, the Belly product line assets were acquired from Hatch Loyalty by Mobivity Holdings Corp.

References

External links

Official WebsiteLoyalty Agency
{{Authority control Customer loyalty programs Companies based in Chicago American companies established in 2011 Customer loyalty programs in Canada Reward, cashback and comparison-shopping digital platforms

History

References

Further reading

External links